So my gay ass—already pretty sparkly—got glitterbombed at the University of California at Irvine last Monday. This went up on Bilerico yesterday:

According to my source at the event, Savage was in the middle of answering a question from a student who was wondering if her boyfriend was a freak because he watched porn featuring trans women. Savage suggested that her boyfriend was a freak, while freely using the terms “shemale” and “freaky tranny porn.” That is when two individuals ran up and threw glitter on him yelling “Transphobe!”

So: a “source” says that I stood on a stage at UCI and “freely” tossed the word “shemale” and the phrase “freaky tranny porn” around and called someone who was into trans porn—and presumably attracted to trans people—a “freak,” comments which inspired two “individuals” to run up and toss glitter at me. Now there’s a Change.org petition—I’ve already signed it, won’t you?—scolding me for my use of “trans-phobic language” and demanding that I apologize for being a such naughty cissy.

The folks who’ve signed the petition—most with their hearts in the right place—have been misled.

Here’s what went down: I was doing a “Savage Love Live” Q&A at UCI. People submit questions anonymously, just like they would for a regular column, using whatever language or terminology they’re comfortable with. I read their questions aloud—verbatim—and offer some on-the-fly advice. Here’s the complete transcript of my “transphobic” comments at UCI (the italics indicate when I’m reading the anonymously submitted question):

DAN: [READING FROM CARD] My boyfriend is straight but he enjoys anal sex and he asks me to make love to him in his butt all the time. [ASIDE:] You have no one to blame but yourself. [READING FROM CARD] Also, he likes watching she-male porn. Could you tell me why he is acting like this? [ANSWER:] Um, I’m gunna go out on a limb here and say it’s because he likes shemale porn and he enjoys anal stimulation. He’s acting like this because he’s a very freaky boy. If you’re into him, and you’re willing to go there for him, there are a lot of straight guys who are into transexual sex-workers, transexual porn, she-males for lack of a better term, although some people think that’s very offensive—

It was at that moment—just as I was beginning to address the problem with the term “shemale”—that I was glitterbombed.

I did say “shemale.” I read the question as-written, repeated the term in my response, and then used “transexual” in place of “shemale” (“transexual sex-worker,” “transexual porn”), modeling the use of less offensive terms, before circling back to “shemale” in order to unpack why some find it offensive. I never used the phrase “freaky tranny porn.” I never said the word “tranny” at UCI at all; indeed, I’ve made a conscious effort to stop using “tranny” after the memo went out last year declaring the word an off-limits “hate term.” (Mike Signorile wrote a good post about the rapidly changing take on the word “tranny” here.)

As for “freaky boy”: that boy is a bit of a freak and anyone who reads my column knows that I’m pro-freak, pro-kink, pro-porn, pro-just-about-everything. I’m a freak myself, as I’ve said numerous times, I married a freak, some of my best friends are freaks. “Freak,” in the context of “Savage Love,” is a freakin’ compliment. More to the point: I didn’t tell the girl who asked the question to dump her boyfriend because he enjoys trans porn; indeed, I urged her to keep dating him if she was into him and willing to go there (anal, allowing him to enjoy his porn). And this is nothing new with me: I’ve long taken the side of people who are trans or attracted to trans folks. Here’s a column I wrote about trans issues in 1999. (Try not to get bogged down on the headline, thought policepersons, as columnists don’t write their own headlines.) And the advice I was giving to trans/trans-attracted people in 1999 isn’t much different from the advice I gave earlier this year. (Is this the kind of advice that a transphobic sex-advice columnist doles out? Is this? Or this?)

Back to what went down at UCI: It’s clear from the transcript—and it’s clear from the way that my remarks are being actively and maliciously misrepresented—that the people pushing this “Dan Savage is transphobic!” meme are not honest actors. False accusations of engaging in hate speech are themselves a form hate speech—particularly in the hothouse environment of LGBT activism. Any honest reader of my column, like any honest person who attended my Q&A at UCI, knows that not only I am not transphobic, I’m pretty rabidly pro-trans.

Or: If I’m the enemy of trans people everywhere, trans people everywhere could use more enemies like me.

UPDATE: Someone who was at the UCI event describes in his own words what went down in a comment at JMG. The commenter misattributes “freaky tranny porn” to me, based on the Bilerico report, but he gets the rest of the details right.

UPDATE 2: This just in from someone who signed that Change.org petition:

I signed this petition at the request of a trusted friend and, after I signed it, I immediately regretted it after I realized the nature of the petition. Please accept my apologies… I should have been more careful with what I was signing. Thank you for your continued efforts and all that you do. You have been a great influence on my life and those around me.

UPDATE 3: Some folks are slamming trans activists and trans people generally in the comments thread here and on some other blogs. Please don’t do that. And for the record: not one of the folks who’ve glittered me—one at Eugene, three at UCI—is actually trans. I know, right? They’ve all been “allies” of the trans community. (Allies of? Or embarrassments to?) That self-righteous, attack-your-allies, too-angry-to-listen bug isn’t unique to Ts; it’s been documented in Ls, Gs, and Bs too. (I myself have succumbed on, oh, one or two occasions.) Also for the record: the day after my talk at UCI, I met and spoke with a trans student—hey there, C—and we had a perfectly delightful, perfectly rational, and mutually enlightening conversation about transphobia, porn, sex, whether “shemale” is ever okay, his coming out process (recent), my coming out process (not so much), and how he needs to stop smoking. (Really, C. Stop smoking.) It was the best conversation I had at UCI, it was a private conversation (it wasn’t filmed), and it was with a trans man.

So, non-trans commenters, please don’t make generalizations about all trans people based on the actions of a few… non-trans people. [Scroll down: apparently one of the GBers is trans.]

UPDATE 4: More damning evidence of my transphobia emerges! A commenter at JMG:

Dan Savage raises over $5000 (from his largely “straight” readership, mind you) for an African American trans woman’s funeral after her murder.

Dan Savage raises over $2000 (from his largely “straight” readership, mind you) for a young trans student kicked out of the same school in Mississippi that Constance McMillan was kicked out of.

Here’s his support of a brutally beaten trans woman in Michigan.

Dan Savage raises the remaining needed funds (from his largely “straight” readership, mind you) for trans porn star and acitivist Buck Angel to finish a documentary about his life/work.

Like I said yesterday: If I’m the enemy of trans people everywhere, trans people everywhere could use more enemies like me.

And if I may address this piece of batshittery:

You may notice that Dan Savage managed to get the glitter bombers arrested, which tends to be a particularly dangerous experience for trans people. If cis folk with the privilege not to get so badly harmed once they do inevitably get arrested were willing to do it, more power to them.

I didn’t get anyone arrested. There was security at the event—there’s always security at television shoots because the presence of TV cameras brings out the crazies—and campus police officers went looking for the GBers while I was briefly backstage getting de-glittered. I went back on stage and continued with the talk. I didn’t know that someone had been arrested until the talk was over 90 minutes later when the police came backstage and told me they had caught one of the people who “assaulted” me. I laughed when they said “assaulted” because, you know, we were talking about glitter. The cops asked if I wanted to press charges, I said no, and I asked them not to hassle the GBer they’d nabbed. I’ve had no further contact with the police.

And this is my favorite comment:

Savage is so addicted to attention and also seems to have such few scruples that I wouldn’t be surprised if he hired this last group of glitter-bombers to do what they did just so he could play the victim and also create this post with impunity. I would not put such behavior past him. Its already been revealed they were not transwomen.

I glittered myself! And the GBers weren’t brave cis folks putting their privileged bodies on the line in defense of their trans allies! They were working for me! And I had one of them arrested!

UPDATE 5: Oh, right—the glass jar.

I was at the Eugene, OR filming. I hope this doesn’t upset some of you.

I think DSWC is a bio female, and straight. My friends know her, and while they have gone to pains to say she is an ally of the LGBT community, she was wrong here. She has been known to be an ally in LGBT causes before, and is well liked. But this is really unfair to Mr. Savage.

I don’t remember enough about the Eugene, OR speech to say whether Dan had said anything that night to deserve the glitter bomb. I do remember it happened early and she yelled something about being a rape apologist. The thing I find really bad on her part is that she threw the large heavy glass container at his head after she threw the glitter. It made a very loud “clunk” when it hit the floor that could be heard throughout the auditorium. After the talk some other students looked and there was a dent in the stage floor where it hit. It barely missed Mr. Savage’s head. If it would have hit him, she could have done serious damage to him. A concussion or worse. She doesn’t seem to be showing any shame on the blog post that this author, has linked to, but this was seriously dangerous.

Just as the witness from the other school commented, once Mr. Savage was cleaned he went on with his conversation and we all laughed, groaned, blushed and had a really good time. Dan spent a few minutes talking about trans issues as well. All very sex positive.

Just thought you all should know. Someone out there is not telling the truth. Whether it is DSWC or the author of this post.

If I hadn’t have ducked, or if I didn’t see it coming (which I might not have, what with glitter in my eyes and all), that glass jar would’ve hit me square in the face. As luck would have it, I did see it coming, and was able to dodge it. So there was that too.

UPDATE 6: The Eugene GBer Tweets that she’s a trans woman and demands a correction:

eugenegber.jpg

Rose was the GBer who threw the jar at my head but she wasn’t the GBer who was arrested; that was one of the GBers at UCI.

UPDATE 7: A reader writes…

I just want to add one more voice to the chorus of sane and reasonable trans folks who respect what you’ve done for the T in GLBT. I’m a long-time fan of the column/podcast, and I think that queer folks who think that you’re the enemy need to get some serious perspective (and I tell the ones I know that, though I doubt they listen). I’m always wary of the “X doesn’t speak for ME!” cries, because in most cases no one ever fucking said they did, but it worries me a little to see the reactions in the comments threads and to see people piling on trans folks for the insanity of the glitter bombers—I promise we’re not all douchebags!

And of course there’s still some room for improvement in how you talk about trans issues, but you know that, and it doesn’t detract from all the real and concrete support you give to the community. So, thanks again for all your hard work.

At least glitter isn’t much of a punishment for someone of your fabulousness. Glad you ducked the jar.

Wendell

268 replies on “On Glitter, Transphobia, and Hate Speech”

  1. So, if Dan Savage thinks glitter-bombing is “ridiculous,” and Joe Jervis thinks that it’s “yawn”-worthy, then why do we cheer when it’s used against MIchele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, etc.?

    Am I missing something?

  4. Anyone who has ever read more than a couple Savage Loves understands your positions and snarky tone. However, when filming for an MTV show at a college, your positions and tone may not be so well understood, especially by highly opinionated college students, and perhaps some people wanted free publicity via MTV. Also, 48 is right, most people don’t normally walk around armed with a bunch of glitter for no reason. I suspect this was premeditated glitterbombing in the first degree, whatever the reason.

  5. Had to join the party!

    Here’s the thing. I understand anger about use of genuine hate speech. I *even* understand anger at someone not in a minority group misguidedly using an in-group term they haven’t been invited to use (e.g. a white person attempting to use “nigger” as a term of jocular familiarity). I DON’T understand people becoming angry about terms that haven’t even acquired the status of hate speech – i.e. ‘tranny.’ I don’t think real homophobes and bigots even use that term. They do use “freak,” but Dan’s use of that is clearly affectionate (and in-groupy).

  6. @48 Good point. These people came there, with their preconceived ideas about Dan readily in place, just ACHING to find anything that Dan said highly offensive.

    It’s really sad to see that a group of people is so ready to find offense in everything everyone says, that they would treat one of their greater allies as an enemy…

  7. UCI?

    1) I’m not surprised, there’s some real hair trigger ppl there
    2) HOW DID I NOT KNOW YOU WERE SPEAKING AT UCI?!?!?

    aaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!

  8. Perhaps the trans community should embraces words they find offensive as gay men have embraced cock sucker, faggot, queer.

    Like Lenny Bruce said, “the word’s suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness”. Take way the power of the word by co-opting it.

  14. Not surprising they were attracted by the prospect of their footage making it into the reality program. Moths to the publicity flame. Silly kids.

  15. @21
    I agree, I don’t like how labels get tossed around, especially in the hyperbolic fashion which is all the rage these days. Instead of ‘thought police,’ these folks are more like ‘purity whiners.’

  16. Jesus, tried to read some comments on Bilerico but didn’t get far before my head exploded. It’s clear to them that Savage uses activism to promote his position as spokesgay of the LGBTs…because that makes perfect sense. Use the activism to GET the fame, not that all that hard work pays off or whatever…

  18. If the Trans community thinks Dan Savage is the enemy, they need to get educated about who real ‘civil rights’ enemies are and how they act. Have some bloody context — Dan is NOT your enemy.

  19. I see this kind of misrepresentation and misdirected hate of Dan surprisingly often in the tumblr “social justice circle jerk” community (god I love the woman who coined that term) and it’s gotten to the point where the blatant lies are so aggravating to me that I’ve had to blacklist his name so I don’t see any posts about him, because I know whatever is being said is just a load of ignorant bullshit. I’m glad you addressed this, Dan! Too bad those circle jerkers have their heads too far up their own asses to do any research other than screaming “transphobe” any time someone utters “she-male,” regardless of context. Now I’m off to play my DS and listen to the latest lovecast.

  21. I wonder if one of the glitter-bombers put that question into the pile in the first place? Or maybe they put a bunch of leading questions in there, in hopes of Dan reading one of them? Seems like they were setting it all up, just waiting for their chance.

    I so hope Dan just laughed, shook off the glitter, and finished unpacking what he was about to say. Can’t wait to see this episode on MTV.

  23. I admit, rather shallowly, that when I read the first sentence:

    So my gay ass—already pretty sparkly—got glitterbombed at the University of California at Irvine last Monday.

    …I got lost in a few moments of imagining Dan’s ass twinkling like a Twilight vampire.

  24. Yep, I have to agree — it’s yet another case in which the letter of the law is taken for the spirit of the law, in which the word is branded as having ‘intrinsically hateful’ meaning (poor word, how could it be its fault?), and people forget that, in language and communication, there’s nothing without context.

    People who want to change society so often get trapped in the wrong wars. Changing words instead of hearts and minds — that’s one of Satan’s most efficient traps to get people to do bad things even when they have good, nay the best, intentions.

  25. @Dan, it’s quite clear to me you’re not transphobic. You’ve said it many times, you’ve given really good advice to trans people in your column, you’ve made it clear that you’re more interested in the person and his/her happiness than in the choices made.

    This was just an attempt to attack your credentials as ‘someone with something to say’ to our society about sexual minorities. An attempt at branding you as some kind of bigot. I do wonder if the question was indeed placed in the pile on purpose, so as to provoke the incident. (In which case this should be evidence that you are becoming a famous sexual-minority-rights advocate, Dan. You’re pissing off the dogmatic, and now they can’t just brush you aside.)

  26. all 76 people above should kill themselves for being fucking morons and posting in these comments.

    does anyone give this much of a shit about dan savage, featured MTV writer?

  27. Heh. Glitterbombing homophobes turns them into raging lunatics because you’ve just emasculated them, and that’s what they hate so much about homos.

    Glitterbombing *homos* on the other hand… that’s kind of like tossing catnip at a cat, isn’t it?

  30. @79: Yes, actually I like Dan because he writes a good column and he fights the good fight.

    Now, what *I* would like to know, is why you care so much to rage blindly like that – even sign up for a Stranger.com account! That’s quite a lot of motivation you’ve got there for someone who “doesn’t care”.

  31. he has no entitlement to the word “freak,” especially since this is language that is often used to demonize, eroticize, and exoticize trans bodies and people. Just last year at CSULB, a transman was cornered, beaten, and got the word “IT” carved in to his chest with a knife, being called a freak and a tranny. The term “freak” can easily be claimed by folk who have privilege, people who don’t have to worry about violence towards their “freakiness” because they can put it away, hide it in the private. I appreciate the transcript and the response, but at the same time, you need to be careful about which words you claim (especially if they are words which you aren’t a victim of their violence).

    It’s a huge deal. Words are powerful. Words with negative connotations get mapped on to those bodies. Sure, we’re reclaiming words like queer, dyke, fag–to an extent–but we claim them because we are trying to heal from the violence that those words have had on our communities. To reclaim “freak,” “shemale” “transexual” “tranny” and the like when it’s NOT YOUR WORD or you were never the target of the violence of the word is to be extremely insensitive, if not ignorant to the history of violence associated with that word. I appreciate the transcript–I was there in the audience–but what I don’t appreciate it is the demonizing of trans folk and the activists. Trans people in that room WERE UNCOMFORTABLE. Unless you want to tell me that they don’t know what transphobia is, and that you know what it’s like better than trans people do….. the trans people in the audience got the perception and the feeling of transphobia. Maybe it didn’t come DIRECTLY FROM DAN SAVAGE. But the space itself was transphobic, and Dan cracking jokes at the expense of others in the room (the girl who wrote the question, trans folk) didn’t help to create a space where trans people felt like they had allies. And that should concern all of us.

  32. @68, who wrote:

    Jesus, tried to read some comments on Bilerico but didn’t get far before my head exploded. It’s clear to them that Savage uses activism to promote his position as spokesgay of the LGBTs…because that makes perfect sense. Use the activism to GET the fame, not that all that hard work pays off or whatever…

    Indeed. It’s all about getting angry at the enemy (we’ve already had that great awareness session in which we decided who the enemy is and isn’t, and that can never be changed, right…), and not about thinking anymore. Revenge. Revenge, sweet revenge!…

    It seems that the transgender acceptance movement will go through this phase other such social movements went through — anger, “you’re-all-bigots-if-you-don’t-accept-my-dogma…” Anti-racism did, feminism did, gay activism did (still does in some places, I hear — here’s GLAAD to provide an example).

    Maybe there’s a phase in which people just want to express how ANGRY they are at something (anti-transgender prejudice) and don’t much care about how they express this anger, what they aim it at, and what the consequences are. If you throw enough glitter bomb arounds, some will hit the right targets, right?

  34. @kamheron, I disagree entirely with you, in fact so fundamentally, all I can say is your efforts are going to backfire.

    Words don’t exist outside of context. There is no such thing as an intrisincally hateful word, only usage makes it so. The word “banana” could morph into a hate word, just like the word “gay” did for a while.

    I’m sure trans people in that room WERE INCOMFORTABLE. But was there some reason for them to be incomfortable about — or were they incomfortable like a mother who thought she had caught her son snorting cocaine, when in fact he was just making soap bubles with his nose?

    People can BE INCOMFORTABLE because of what they IMAGINE is going on. It doens’t follow that it is really going on. Yes, you can BE INCOMFORTABLE for the wrong reasons, or because you misunderstood someone or something. That’s very frequent actually.

  36. @85 exactly! I mean, I think I get it – I used to feel like this about a lot of things (words, especially) when I was figuring out that I was a freak in my adolescence and felt really persecuted about it. I wanted to be angry about it, in a weird way.
    I suppose more than anything I needed to express to someone who would understand me what I wanted to say to those commenters, so thanks.

  37. @kamheron, ALL WORDS ARE MY WORDS, because I speak this friggin’ language and words are part of it, not part of external reality. You can’t change this fact; you’d have to reach into my head and change the language there in order to do that, and this is (as of yet) impossible.

    All words are everybody’s, to do with as they please. Even trademarking words ultimately doesn’t work: even if you invented it, if it is really good it ends up entering the language and belonging to everybody.

    All words are everybody’s.

  38. @84 What we have here is a failure to communicate. It’s as if the sex-positive community and the trans community are speaking two different languages that use the same word sounds for different meanings.

    In sex-positive speak, “freak” means very sex-positive, and is most often a term of either admiration, or warm humor. It is unrelated to the same word used in a transphobic context. Those who can’t see the difference have some issues they need to deal with. Now.

  40. let’s do an example. nigger.

    everyone will be up in arms over it. because you recognize how violent the word is. It’s not “It’s my word so I’m going to use it how I please.” That’s idealist. and insane. You wouldn’t say this to someone who is targeted by the violence of colonialism and slavery because you realize it’s messed up.

    yes, queer folk were targeted by the word “freak.” Are they still now? To a certain extent, yes. Are trans people still constantly hailed by the word? Yes. Ever looked at trans porn? I suggest you do before you start to get the idea in your head that being a “freak” is a positive thing.

  42. @89, so am I. I’m into D/s and other kinky stuff, I even have a little bit of a scat fetish (something even Dan often expresses distaste for; some of his older columns on the topic… :-!…)

    Yes, there was a time in which I thought I just wanted to shout and scream against those who thought I was a freak (even though they didn’t know my kinks, there were plenty of other more conventional reasons for doing that).

    Then I realized that screaming angriy at people I don’t like is exactly what my enemies were doing to me — is exactly what bigots do with gays, lebians, transgendered people, and other queerfolk in general.

    If they were wrong to tell us “what’s right and what’s wrong” in sexual orientation, why is Mr kamheron above any more wrong in telling us what words are mine and what words aren’t? Looks like the same thing to me.

    The sad thing is that transgedered people indeed do suffer a lot — maybe it’s because they suffer a lot that some of them lash out like Mr kamheron above against people for simply using certain words, paying no attention to the idea behind it. Their heart is in the right place — they want to care for those who were hurt. Their methods, though, are despicable, and doomed to failure. Telling others you know their intentions better than they do themselves is always doomed to failure.

  43. UPDATE 3

    Dan had a conversation with a trans man.

    O.M.F.G!…..

    Dan got close enough to a real live trans man to have a conversation!

    and they say there are no more Saints…..

  45. I’m not interested in a semantics battle, perse. But ya’ll have some serious internalized transphobia to work through. I know that Dan is working through them, a close friend of mine had a lengthy conversation with him about trans politics after the show. Ya’ll should do the same, or you should just be honest and drop the T from the LGB(T) acronym.

  47. I have been reading Dan’s column since the “Hey Faggot” days and just have never seen him be transphobic. I’ve been around transfolks most my out gay life and for much of that that time they used the word tranny all the time. I remember many columns that Dan gave sound, smart advise to Transpeople. But you can’t please everyone all the time. It’s like when QueerNation started and many Gays had a problem with the word queer. My guess that in 5 years the Trans Community will embrace the word tranny just like most gays have embraced the word queer. Oh and to PapaBear-Fuck off! You still obviously still have an issue with being fat, hairy & stinky. And I am a bear.

  48. and btw dan, 2 of the 3 people at UCI were trans. I cannot name names or out them because of legal trouble (which I hope you don’t press, especially if you look at the history of police at UCI, look at Irvine 19 and the Irvine 11).

  49. @93 (mr kamheron), of course nigger is my word. In more ways than you can think.

    It so happens I’m Brazilian. The English word “nigger” — via “Negro” — comes from Portuguese “negro”, which is a beautiful word to describe the black color. Just as English-language poets might talk about “dark as the night”, or talk about how mesmerizing someone’s “dark eyes” are, Portuguese poets talk about “olhos negros” and how deeply beautiful they are. (Do you know the Russian song “ochi chornye”, a beautiful song I love to listen to? Its tranlsation into English is Dark Eyes, but in Portuguese it is — you guessed it — “olhos negros”, nigger eyes.

    So yes, this is my word, in more ways perhaps than it is yours, since my mother tongue is the language that gave birth to it. And yes, I could use it to someone who was targeted by slavery and colonialism — only I’d try to make sure it is used in a way that doesn’t hurt. (Given the history of this word, that is difficult, but by no means impossible.)

    Remember the South Park episode in which Ron Marsh was branded as a “nigger guy” because he used the word “nigger” in public once? (If you don’t, it’s here.) Watch that episode again, and try to tell me that the word “nigger” is being used there to hurt the modern-day descendants of slaves. It isn’t.

    Of course many people were made to suffer via this word. And here’s the problem: you confuse the action — making them suffer — with the word. As if words couldn’t be used to do all kinds of things, good and bad. As if words had only one use, one intrinsic “hatefulness” about them.

    With respect to “freak”, read what @91 (BrooklynReader) wrote above, and think about it for a while. Think about language and words, and how they change through time, and what makes that happen.

    It’s a complicated world, and trying to oversimplify things by claiming “freak” or “nigger” or “faggot” are only ‘bad’ words that nobody should use reeks of Victorian puritanism plus old-style grammatical/lexical prescriptivism: there is only one “right” language, and if you don’t use it you’re “baaad”.

    No, there isn’t. The world just ain’t that simple.

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